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Next Generation
Who you are speaks louder than what you say
By Duffy Robbins

I remember it vividly. It was the last of our four pre-marital counseling sessions and the rector of my wife’s home church was wrapping up his comments with some final words of closure: “Well, it won’t be long until the big day...”, “Maggie, you’re a very, very fortunate young woman....” and “Oh, yeah, I wanted to tell you this myself....I’m going to tell our Board tonight. But I want you to know that my wife and I have decided to get a divorce....”

Now obviously, that doesn’t mean everything he had said was wrong. After all, Maggie and I both agree that she was a very, very fortunate young woman. And I think there were some other helpful insights and observations as well. But just as obvious is the fact that when he spoke those words it really drained the impact of all the other words we had heard him speak. It wasn’t that the content was unsound; it’s that what he said with his life drowned out the sound of his teaching.

In the next several issues of Good News, we want to look more closely at speaking to teenagers. Whether you’re a Sunday school teacher, a youth pastor, someone who does a weekly devotional for the youth group or someone who got “volunteered” to share at the youth retreat, all of us who speak to teenagers on a regular basis know that it can be a tough assignment. Hopefully, over the next few months as we think through some of the tricky parts of that enterprise, it will become a bit easier, or, at least, a bit less terrifying!

There’s no better place to begin that discussion than with what Aristotle described as ethos, the ethical dimension of the message, the element of the message that begins with us—the speaker. We’ve all heard the little aphorism: Who you are is more important than what you say. That, in a nutshell, summarizes the ethical dimension of a talk.

The writer of Proverbs speaks of his amazement at “the way of man with a maiden” (Proverbs 30:18). You could be forgiven for thinking it’s not totally appropriate, but it’s an image I want us to use in thinking about the ethical dimension of speaking to teenagers. In fact, retired Wheaton College communication professor, Em Griffin,uses precisely this passage from Proverbs to help us see some of the unethical roles we can fall into as Christian communicators.

The Non-Lover: Like a postman delivering flowers, the non-lover is faithful to get the message through, but there’s no apparent passion attached to the delivery or to those who will receive the bouquet. “Here’s the gospel, kids. If you believe it, great. If you don’t believe it, that’s fine too. I’ve got a commission to fill and I don’t have time for your problems.”

The Flirt: The flirt is not so much in love with students as they’re in love with the idea of speaking to students. The flirt winks, smiles, whispers sweet nothings, and moves on. One of the best ways to avoid becoming a flirt is to make a long-term commitment to a specific group of students;  don’t just speak to them, invest in them.

The Seducer: The seducer is the speaker who will do anything or say anything if it moves students to respond. Crude humor? “Hey, it works.” Untruthful illustrations? “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Fudging a little on the truth of the Word? “Look, we’ve got to change the message with the times.” The seducer does whatever it takes.

The Abuser: The abuser doesn’t allow students the freedom to question, think through, respond or reject. We’ve all heard communicators who use coercion, threat and manipulation to get an audience to respond. It’s the speaking equivalent to the Crusaders who marched out in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries with a desire to reclaim Jerusalem and the Holy Land for God. It was evangelism by force. Our call as communicators is to be persuaders, not crusaders (cf. 2 Cor. 5:11).

When we speak to our kids, there are two biblical motivations: one is love, the other is truth. Paul wrote, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced...” (2 Corinthians 5:14). We speak because we’re compelled by the love of Christ, and we’re compelled by the love of Christ because we’re convinced that “one died for all”. Both are important. Truth without love is unattractive and coercive. Love without truth is sloppy agape. Paul’s ministry was clearly a combination of both (see 1 Thessalonians 2: 3-12): “we were gentle..like a mother caring for her children...”—that’s love, and “we dealt with each of you as a father...encouraging, comforting, and urging you to lead lives worthy of God...”—that’s truth. Effective communication begins in the heart (love) and the mind (truth) of the communicator. That’s ethos.



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